I’ve only really started to look at Bhuvan Shome so here are some tentative thoughts about the film, which I hope to return to at a later date. Bhuvan Shome is often cited as having initiated the New Indian Cinema movement. Released in 1969, along with Sara Akash and Uski Roti, as a triptych, the films […]
Tag: Parallel Cinema
THE THRESHOLD (Dir. Pushan Kripalani, 2015, India)
Pushan Kripalani’s superbly acted two-hander Chekhovian chamber piece resonates expressively with the barest of cinematic narrations; a married couple in their sixties have reached a crossroads that results in Rinku (Neena Gupta) telling her husband Raj (Rajit Kapoor) that she is leaving him. Kripalani attentively details the regrets and hostilities laid bare in the candid […]
ISLAND CITY (Dir. Ruchika Oberoi, 2015, India)
The worker as drone is a familiar enough image these days, ubiquitous with the way corporate companies suffocate the life out of its employees so that they can maximise profits. The worker drone, dispossessed of all pleasure, is drolly captured in Ruchika Oberoi’s portmanteau Island City. The first story eponymously titled ‘The Fun Committee’ is […]
QISSA: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost (Dir. Anup Singh, 2014, India) [Spoilers]
The title of the film comes from the arabic word ‘Qissa’ which means folk tale. The Punjabi Qissa has a strong oral tradition and families from the Punjab can recite Qisse or tales that are both specific to genre and a family history. Anup Singh draws widely on such a cultural tradition, narrating a tragic […]
